The Heart of the Matter (31 page)

The Commissioner said, ‘Come in, Scobie. I’ve got good news for you,’ and Scobie prepared himself for yet another rejection.

‘Baker is not coming here. They need him in Palestine. They’ve decided after all to let the right man succeed me.’ Scobie sat down on the window-ledge and watched his hand tremble on his knee. He thought: so all this need not have happened. If Louise had stayed I should never have loved Helen, I would never have been blackmailed by Yusef, never have committed that act of despair. I would have been myself still—the same self that lay stacked in fifteen years of diaries, not this broken cast. But, of course, he told himself, it’s only because I have done these things that success comes. I am of the devil’s party. He looks after his own in this world. I shall go now from damned success to damned success, he thought with disgust.

‘I think Colonel Wright’s word was the deciding factor. You impressed him, Scobie.’

‘It’s come too late, sir.’

‘Why too late?’

‘I’m too old for the job. It needs a younger man.’

‘Nonsense. You’re only just fifty.’

‘My health’s not good.’

‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it.’

‘I was telling Robinson at the bank today. I’ve been getting pains, and I’m sleeping badly.’ He talked rapidly, beating time on his knee. ‘Robinson swears by Travis. He seems to have worked wonders with him.’

‘Poor Robinson.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s been given two years to live. That’s in confidence, Scobie.’

Human beings never cease to surprise: so it was the death sentence that had cured Robinson of his imaginary ailments, his medical books, his daily walk from wall to wall. I suppose, Scobie thought, that is what comes of knowing the worst—one is left alone with the worst and it’s like peace. He imagined Robinson talking across the desk to his solitary companion. ‘I hope we all die as calmly,’ he said. ‘Is he going home?’

‘I don’t think so. I suppose presently he’ll have to go to the Argyll.’

Scobie thought: I wish I had known what I had been looking at. Robinson was exhibiting the most enviable possession a man can own—a happy death. This tour would bear a high proportion of deaths—or perhaps not so high when you counted them and remembered Europe. First Pemberton, then the child at Pende, now Robinson … no, it wasn’t many, but of course he hadn’t counted the blackwater cases in the military hospital.

‘So that’s how matters stand,’ the Commissioner said. ‘Next tour you will be Commissioner. Your wife will be pleased.’

I must endure her pleasure, Scobie thought, without anger. I am the guilty man, and I have no right to criticize, to show vexation ever again. He said, ‘I’ll be getting home.’

Ali stood by his car, talking to another boy who slipped quietly away when he saw Scobie approach. ‘Who was that, Ali?’

‘My small brother, sah,’ Ali said.

‘I don’t know him, do I? Same mother?’

‘No, sah, same father.’

‘What does he do?’ Ali worked at the starting handle, his face dripping with sweat, saying nothing.

‘Who does he work for, Ali?’

‘Sah?’

‘I said who does he work for?’

‘For Mr Wilson, sah.’

The engine started and Ali climbed into the back seat. ‘Has he ever made you a proposition, Ali? I mean has he asked you to report on me—for money?’ He could see Ali’s face in the driving mirror, set, obstinate, closed and rocky like a cave mouth. ‘No, sah.’

‘Lots of people are interested in me and pay good money for reports. They think me bad man, Ali.’

Ali said, ‘I’m your boy,’ staring back through the medium of the mirror. It seemed to Scobie one of the qualities of deceit that you lost the sense of trust. If I can lie and betray, so can others. Wouldn’t many people gamble on my honesty and lose their stake? Why should I lose my stake on Ali? I have not been caught and he has not been caught, that’s all. An awful depression weighed his head
towards
the wheel. He thought: I know that Ali is honest: I have known that for fifteen years; I am just trying to find a companion in this region of lies. Is the next stage the stage of corrupting others?

Louise was not in when they arrived. Presumably someone had called and taken her out—perhaps to the beach. She hadn’t expected him back before sundown. He wrote a note for her,
Taking some furniture up to Helen. Will be back early with good news for you
, and then he drove up alone to the Nissen huts through the bleak empty middle day. Only the vultures were about—gathering round a dead chicken at the edge of the road, stooping their old men’s necks over the carrion, their wings like broken umbrellas sticking out this way and that.

‘I’ve brought you another table and a couple of chairs. Is your boy about?’

‘No, he’s at market.’

They kissed as formally now when they met as a brother and sister. When the damage was done adultery became as unimportant as friendship. The flame had licked them and gone on across the clearing: it had left nothing standing except a sense of responsibility and a sense of loneliness. Only if you trod barefooted did you notice the heat in the grass. Scobie said, ‘I’m interrupting your lunch.’

‘Oh no. I’ve about finished. Have some fruit salad.’

‘It’s time you had a new table. This one wobbles.’ He said, ‘They are making me Commissioner after all.’

‘It will please your wife,’ Helen said,

‘It doesn’t mean a thing to me.’

‘Oh, of course it does,’ she said briskly. This was another convention of hers—that only she suffered. He would for a long time resist, like Coriolanus, the exhibition of
his
wounds, but sooner or later he would give way: he would dramatize his pain in words until even to himself it seemed unreal. Perhaps, he would think, she is right after all: perhaps I don’t suffer. She said, ‘Of course the Commissioner must be above suspicion, mustn’t he, like Caesar.’ (Her sayings, as well as her spelling, lacked accuracy) ‘This is the end of us, I suppose.’

‘You know there is no end to us.’

‘Oh, but the Commissioner can’t have a mistress hidden away
in
a Nissen hut.’ The sting, of course, was in the ‘hidden away,’ but how could he allow himself to feel the least irritation, remembering the letter she had written to him, offering herself as a sacrifice any way he liked, to keep or to throw away? Human beings couldn’t be heroic all the time: those who surrendered everything—for God or love—must be allowed sometimes in thought to take back their surrender. So many had never committed the heroic act, however rashly. It was the act that counted. He said, ‘If the Commissioner can’t keep you, then I shan’t be the Commissioner.’

‘Don’t be silly. After all,’ she said with fake reasonableness, and he recognized this as one of her bad days, ‘what do we get out of it?’

‘I get a lot,’ he said, and wondered: is that a lie for the sake of comfort? There were so many lies nowadays he couldn’t keep track of the small, the unimportant ones.

‘An hour of two every other day perhaps when you can slip away. Never so much as a night.’

He said hopelessly, ‘Oh, I have plans.’

‘What plans?’

He said, ‘They are too vague still.’

She said with all the acid she could squeeze out, ‘Well, let me know in time. To fall in with your wishes, I mean.’

‘My dear, I haven’t come here to quarrel.’

‘I sometimes wonder what you do come here for.’

‘Well, today I brought some furniture.’

‘Oh yes, the furniture.’

‘I’ve got the car here. Let me take you to the beach.’

‘Oh, we can’t be seen there together.’

‘That’s nonsense. Louise is there now, I think.’

‘For God’s sake,’ Helen said, ‘keep that smug woman out of my sight.’

‘All right then. I’ll take you for a run in the car.’

‘That would be safer, wouldn’t it?’

Scobie took her by the shoulders and said, ‘I’m not always thinking of safety.’

‘I thought you were.’

Suddenly he felt his resistance give way and he shouted at her, ‘The sacrifice isn’t all on your side.’ With despair he could see
from
a distance the scene coming up on both of them: like the tornado before the rains, that wheeling column of blackness which would soon cover the whole sky.

‘Of course work must suffer,’ she said with childish sarcasm. ‘All these snatched half-hours.’

‘I’ve given up hope,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve given up the future. I’ve damned myself.’

‘Don’t be so melodramatic,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about. Anyway, you’ve just told me about the future—the Commissionership.’

‘I mean the real future—the future that goes on.’

She said, ‘If there’s one thing I hate it’s your Catholicism. I suppose it comes of having a pious wife. It’s so bogus. If you really believed you wouldn’t be here.’

‘But I do believe and I am here.’ He said with bewilderment, ‘I can’t explain it, but there it is. My eyes are open. I know what I’m doing. When Father Rank came down to the rail carrying the sacrament …’

Helen exclaimed with scorn and impatience, ‘You’ve told me all that before. You are trying to impress me. You don’t believe in Hell any more than I do.’

He took her wrists and held them furiously. He said, ‘You can’t get out of it that way. I believe, I tell you. I believe that I’m damned for all eternity—unless a miracle happens. I’m a policeman. I know what I’m saying. What I’ve done is far worse than murder—that’s an act, a blow, a stab, a shot: it’s over and done, but I’m carrying my corruption around with me. It’s the coating of my stomach.’ He threw her wrists aside like seeds towards the stony floor. ‘Never pretend I haven’t shown my love.’

‘Love for your wife, you mean. You were afraid she’d find out.’

Anger drained out of him. He said, ‘Love for both of you. If it were just for her there’d be an easy straight way.’ He put his hands over his eyes, feeling hysteria beginning to mount again. He said, ‘I can’t bear to see suffering, and I cause it all the time. I want to get out, get out.’

‘Where to?’

Hysteria and honesty receded: cunning came back across the threshold like a mongrel dog. He said, ‘Oh, I just mean take a holiday.’ He added, ‘I’m not sleeping well. And I’ve been getting an odd pain.’

‘Darling, are you ill?’ The pillar had wheeled on its course: the storm was involving others now: it had passed beyond them. Helen said, ‘Darling, I’m a bitch. I get tired and fed up with things—but it doesn’t mean anything. Have you seen a doctor?’

‘I’ll see Travis at the Argyll some time soon.’

‘Everybody says Dr Sykes is better.’

‘No, I don’t want to see Dr Sykes.’ Now that the anger and hysteria had passed he could see her exactly as she was that first evening when the sirens blew. He thought, O God, I can’t leave her. Or Louise. You don’t need me as they need me. You have your good people, your saints, all the company of the blessed. You can do without me. He said. ‘I’ll take you for a spin now in the car. It will do us both good.’

In the dusk of the garage he took her hands again and kissed her. He said, ‘There are no eyes here … Wilson can’t see us. Harris isn’t watching. Yusef’s boys …’

‘Dear, I’d leave you tomorrow if it would help.’

‘It wouldn’t help.’ He said, ‘You remember when I wrote you a letter—which got lost. I tried to put down everything there, plainly, in black and white. So as not to be cautious any more. I wrote that I loved you more than my wife …’ As he spoke he heard another’s breath behind his shoulder, beside the car. He said, sharply, ‘Who’s that?’

‘What, dear?’

‘Somebody’s here.’ He came round to the other side of the car and said sharply, ‘Who’s there? Come out.’

‘It’s Ali,’ Helen said.

‘What are you doing here, Ali?’

‘Missus sent me,’ Ali said. ‘I wait here for Massa tell him Missus back.’ He was hardly visible in the shadow.

‘Why were you waiting here?’

‘My head humbug me,’ Ali said. ‘l go for sleep, small, small sleep.’

‘Don’t frighten him,’ Helen said. ‘He’s telling the truth.’

‘Go along home, Ali,’ Scobie told him, ‘and tell Missus I come straight down.’ He watched him pad out into the hard sunlight between the Nissen huts. He never looked back.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ Helen said. ‘He didn’t understand a thing.’

‘I’ve had Ali for fifteen years,’ Scobie said. It was the first time he had been ashamed before him in all those years. He remembered Ali the night after Pemberton’s death, cup of tea in hand, holding him up against the shaking lorry, and then he remembered Wilson’s boy slinking off along the wall by the police station.

‘You can trust him, anyway.’

‘I don’t know how,’ Scobie said. ‘I’ve lost the trick of trust.’

II

Louise was asleep upstairs, and Scobie sat at the table with his diary open. He had written down against the date October 31:
Commissioner told me this morning I am to succeed him. Took some furniture to H.R. Told Louise news, which pleased her
. The other life—bare and undisturbed and built of facts—lay like Roman foundations under his hand. This was the life he was supposed to lead; no one reading this record would visualize the obscure shameful scene in the garage, the interview with the Portuguese captain, Louise striking out blindly with the painful truth, Helen accusing him of hypocrisy … He thought: this is how it ought to be. I am too old for emotion. I am too old to be a cheat. Lies are for the young. They have a lifetime of truth to recover in. He looked at his watch, 11.45, and wrote: Temperature at 2 p.m. 92º. The lizard pounced upon the wall, the tiny jaws clamping on a moth. Something scratched outside the door—a pye-dog? He laid his pen down again and loneliness sat across the table opposite him. No man surely was less alone with his wife upstairs and his mistress little more than five hundred yards away up the hill, and yet it was loneliness that seated itself like a companion who doesn’t need to speak. It seemed to him that he had never been so alone before.

There was nobody now to whom he could speak the truth.
There
were things the Commissioner must not know, Louise must not know, there were even limits to what he could tell Helen, for what was the use, when he had sacrificed so much in order to avoid pain, of inflicting it needlessly? As for God he could speak to Him only as one speaks to an enemy—there was bitterness between them. He moved his hand on the table, and it was as though his loneliness moved too and touched the tips of his fingers. ‘You and I,’ his loneliness said, ‘you and I.’ It occurred to him that the outside world if they knew the facts might envy him: Bagster would envy him Helen, and Wilson Louise. What a hell of a quiet dog, Fraser would exclaim with a lick of the lips. They would imagine, he thought with amazement, that I get something out of it, but it seemed to him that no man had ever got less. Even self-pity was denied him because he knew so exactly the extent of his guilt. He felt as though he had exiled himself so deeply in the desert that his skin had taken on the colour of the sand.